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IBM MQ vs TIBCO Enterprise Message Service comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM MQ
Ranking in Business Activity Monitoring
1st
Ranking in Message Oriented Middleware (MOM)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
174
Ranking in other categories
Message Queue (MQ) Software (1st)
TIBCO Enterprise Message Se...
Ranking in Business Activity Monitoring
2nd
Ranking in Message Oriented Middleware (MOM)
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Business Activity Monitoring category, the mindshare of IBM MQ is 19.9%, down from 42.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TIBCO Enterprise Message Service is 14.9%, down from 21.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Activity Monitoring Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM MQ19.9%
TIBCO Enterprise Message Service14.9%
Other65.2%
Business Activity Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

MK
SWIFT manager at Raiffeisen Bank Aval
Reliable payment processing is achieved with minimal disruption
Currently, we have some disadvantages; it's a bit difficult to use IBM ID to access support from the IBM site. To get nice support from IBM, we need to use IBM ID, and it's a bit complicated to integrate it with IBM support. Support can be better because sometimes we need explanations for some behaviors of the product, and it's not easy to reach the proper person in IBM support. They could add some new features into IBM MQ to make it better. A graphical user interface in addition to MQ Explorer could be useful, but we are satisfied with MQ Explorer as well.
Ray Ochieng - PeerSpot reviewer
Integration Lead at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
A value-for-money solution with the requisite features to facilitate efficient communication within an organization
We have been struggling with the stability of TIBCO Enterprise Message Service (EMS), but now I don't know how to differentiate whether the issues are caused by the infrastructure or the product itself. So, I am hesitant to provide a rating because I suspect that it might be due to my setup or environment. I really don't know how to evaluate the product independently. We have faced challenges with EMS, but I am unsure if it is related to infrastructure or the product itself. Even if I reach out for support, I am uncertain if the issue will be resolved since it could be partly related to the product. It's a tough situation.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution is stable."
"IBM MQ deals mainly with the queuing mechanism. It passes the data and it publishes it. These two abilities are the most valuable features."
"The most valuable feature of IBM MQ is transaction processing."
"The best features of IBM MQ were stability and straightforward application functionality; it has vendor support, which was a significant advantage, and in case of any production issues, we definitely get vendor support, whereas with Kafka and others, we have to rely on open community and our research."
"The solution is easy to understand and even medium developers can easily start using it."
"I like the MQ's simplicity and rock-solid stability. I've never experienced a failure in two decades caused by the product itself. It has only failed due to human error."
"IBM MQ is the right choice because of the stability and the performance. And from the support perspective, it's enough to have a really small team."
"The best thing about IBM MQ solution is that it's guaranteed delivery and it's fast."
"It is very useful tool. It is also very easy to learn and implement.​"
"It allows us to achieve synchronous as well as asynchronous communication with the added advantage of making the communication reliable."
"TIBCO Enterprise Message Service's most valuable features are rapid zero-code integration and its large number of adapters and plugins."
"We have implanted the core middleware solution for the organization using this product and it is responsible for communication between different applications."
"The Enterprise Messaging Server will store the message and wait for other subscribers to come onto the network."
"The setup was done by TIBCO. It has been stable and has a server."
"​The initial setup is straightforward and the product documentation is very good.​"
"I like TIBCO's ability to create versioned queues and persistent messages."
 

Cons

"I wanted to upgrade Windows Server. It's not that easy to move."
"The product does not allow users to access data from API or external networks since it can only be used in a closed network, making it an area where improvements are required."
"The integration capabilities could be even easier."
"They need to add the ability to send full messages (header + payload) from the MQ Explorer program, not just the payload."
"It could get a face lift with a modern marketing campaign."
"If they could have some front-end monitoring tool that could be easily available for the team to use, that could be great."
"I don’t like legacy view of MQ."
"The worst part is the monitoring or admin, especially in the ACE or Broker. There is always a problem of transparency. In MQ you can observe any process and you know exactly what's going on behind the scenes, but with the ACE or Broker, it's a problem monitoring the HTTP inputs. It's like a black box."
"An area for improvement would be integration with the API layer."
"​Since all the communications goes through this product, it acts as a single point of failure."
"TIBCO also has its proprietary line of cloud-based applications, but specifically, these two products are not cloud compatible."
"Overall, my experience with the support team has been disappointing."
"I would like to see better integration with Java and Apache Kafka."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing needs improvement."
"It's a very expensive product."
"Licensing for this software is on a yearly basis. The standard fee includes the maintenance and updates that are released periodically."
"It's super expensive, so ask them if they can consolidate some other licensing costs. But, IBM is IBM, so I guess we'll pay for it."
"The price of the solution could be reduced, and we are on an annual subscription."
"I think the pricing is reasonable, especially with IIB as a part of it."
"Pricing could be better, as with all IBM products. But their performance in production, along with security and scalability, will pay returns in the long run."
"I think IBM needs to look at its pricing. The prices of IBM products should be simple. The old way of pricing should now be moving on to the cloud to be pay as you go, a plan-based kind of pricing."
"In our case, we didn't pay for each product separately. We simply paid for all those companies that provided the components."
"​The cost of licensing is very high. One should go for the product only if they need to ensure message reliability and they cannot afford to lose messages.​"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
29%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Marketing Services Firm
5%
Financial Services Firm
38%
Computer Software Company
8%
University
7%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise147
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is MQ software?
Hi As someone with 45+ years of experience in the Transaction and Message Processing world, I have seen many "MQ" solutions that have come into the market place. From my perspective, while each pro...
What are the differences between Apache Kafka and IBM MQ?
Apache Kafka is open source and can be used for free. It has very good log management and has a way to store the data used for analytics. Apache Kafka is very good if you have a high number of user...
How does IBM MQ compare with VMware RabbitMQ?
IBM MQ has a great reputation behind it, and this solution is very robust with great stability. It is easy to use, simple to configure and integrates well with our enterprise ecosystem and protocol...
Ask a question
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Also Known As

WebSphere MQ
Enterprise Message Service
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Deutsche Bahn, Bon-Ton, WestJet, ARBURG, Northern Territory Government, Tata Steel Europe, Sharp Corporation
BNL, SunGard, TUI Group, UTi Worldwide, Yellow Pages Group
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM MQ vs. TIBCO Enterprise Message Service and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,757 professionals have used our research since 2012.